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Outside Parliament, the rock guitarist was scathing of David Cameron’s culling policy and called on his namesake and new Prime Minister Theresa May to hold fire on a new round of badger shooting.

Brian May said: “We have a new administration – let’s ask them to take very serious and fresh look at the problem of bovine TB in cattle.

“It seems evident from the fact that the Government has not produced any evidence whatsoever that the existing culls have worked. It seems evident that it is not working.

“The Government were advised that culling badgers would make no meaningful contribution whatsoever to the control of bovine TV in cattle. That advice was given to them by their own body who did the research.

“They killed 11,000 badgers to discover this but Cameron’s Government completely ignored all this advice and carried on with a cull which has cost the taxpayer millions of pounds and we are no better off. In fact, we may be worse off.”

The cull has cost the taxpayer millions of pounds and we are no better off

Brian May

The rock star continued: “Sadly, the Government and elements of the NFU have blamed it on the badgers but we believe that’s unjustified.

“Professor Ian Boyd himself, who is the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government at the moment, has said the contribution by badgers to the whole situation is probably less than six per cent.

“Now if that’s the case, we should be spending millions of pounds eliminating bovine TB in the herds not by peripheral activity with wildlife.

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The Queen legend insists that "we are taking a terrible risk"

“There is some evidence that meddling with wildlife can make things worse rather than better. So we are taking a terrible risk.

“We are spending millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on something which is never going to work. So let’s change and do something new."

At the root of the root of the problem, he says, is the skin test which detects bovine TB antibodies in cattle.

He explained: “We believe the skin test is woefully inadequate and has caused farmers misery for generations.

“The skin test was not designed to do what it is being asked to do at the moment. The skin test leaves infected animals in the herd and these infected animals caused continuous breakdowns.”

Brian May wants more effective testing rolled out so that infected cattle to be identified.

They are not available to farmers at the moment but are urgently needed to do away with the “wildly inaccurate” skin tests currently used.

Three counties have already witnessed badger culls – Gloucester, Somerset and Dorset – in recent times and Theresa May’s new ministerial team will consider extending the operation this autumn.

A total of 29 applications to shoot the protected mammals have been submitted to Natural England for culls in Cheshire, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Somerset, Wiltshire and Worcestershire.

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Badger supporters warn that there could be a final death toll of up to 100,000 badgers if the culls are rolled out as planned over coming years. This, they say, goes against top academic advice.

As the “Big Badger Mosaic” – artwork comprised of selfie photographs from animal lovers, including celebrities Dame Judi Dench, Joanna Lumley and Brian Blessed – was being unveiled outside the Houses of Parliament, inside MPs were being briefed by three professors, with expert knowledge of the bovine TB issue and who are now calling on the Government to abandon the cull expansion.

Professor Ranald Munro chaired the Independent Expert Panel commissioned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to assess the first police cull.

Its conclusion was that it failed to meet the criteria for humaneness or effectiveness.

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Supporters warn there could be a final death toll of up to 100,000 badgers if the culls happen

The other experts meeting MPs were Professor John Bourne, and Professor Rosie Woodroffe, who oversaw the badger culls between 1998 and 2007 which concluded that “badger culling is unlikely to contribute usefully to the control of cattle TB in Britain”.

Prof Ranald Munro said: “The suffering caused to free-ranging badgers by shooting, coupled with the demonstrated ineffectiveness of this method in the overall objective to reduce TB infection in cattle, means that continuation of such shooting will result in further suffering in badgers for no recognisable benefit to farmers, the livestock industry or the public. In short, the badgers will suffer unnecessarily.”

Animal welfare charities and conservation organisations have come together to form Team Badger to challenge the culling policy.

One of its leading supporters is Humane Society International/UK, whose spokeswoman Wendy Higgins said: “Shooting badgers to control TB in cattle has been roundly condemned as cruel and pointless by virtually every wildlife and conservation expert qualified to comment.

“It’s bad enough that the culls are taking place in the current zones, but to expand this madness and allow license-holders to run around even more of our countryside in the dark with shotguns, taking pot shots at badgers, would be truly irresponsible.”